so you're telling me that there's vivian... AND momentum wavedashing in srb2?? peak.
(review written for v1.2 of vivian)
vivian's moveset is simple, intuitive, and fun. shadow drop and rise have an incredible sense of flow. i really like the 5 tick "stylish" window; it's not too precise, but it still requires precision which is just so nice for interactive gameplay-- and oh my god the dopamine i get from hitting a stylish move with the sfx and the visual actively makes my day better, actually such a nice touch.
replacing hover with punch seems like a nice decision. i haven't played the mod with hover, but it just seems like hover would make levels absolutely free. besides, i think the projectile works really well with her moveset since her veil moves can feel a bit slippery for combat. so overall, in my eyes it's probably just the better ability of the two for vivian.
that said, veil rise gives you absolutely too much. you can easily reach over 1500 units in the air (higher than tails can fly) and over 1.5x the speed of a fully rev'd spindash in under 2 seconds without having to stop and charge anything. speed is super satisfying to achieve in this game, but veil rise feels like it hands it out for free, as well as breaks the distance vs height relationship in level design. she doesn't feel balanced at all with other characters or levels (custom or vanilla). shadow rise alone made me consider ranking her 3 out of 5 with how absolutely cracked it is. with that, i'd like to mention again that i really like the 5 tick stylish window -- the precision part is not the problem; i just think each stylish veil jump gives you way too much momentum and height.
her visuals, despite the crunchy pixels from srb2's (lack of) palette, are super neat. the custom paper effect and her stretchy shadow tail thing are SOOOO cool and adds so much charm to the character while still fitting into the visuals of srb2. it does feel like her jump animation is a tad slow, and also she enters her jump animation whenever dying after using veil dive. and that's... really all i have for the visuals, besides c1 for trans pride being peak. all her animations are expressive and fit what she's doing, and because of this it's pretty easy to look past the cronchy pixels.
final nitpicks, ranked:
- the custom paper mario effect is so peak, but it feels a little unnatural that she always defaults to left at a standstill even if she was just looking to the right. i could not possibly know how difficult it is to code her looking the same direction she was just looking in, but if it's feasible it'd feel a lot more smooth and would be even peaker.
- instead of just showing the player "stylish" i think it'd be cool to have the rest of the paper mario expressions (i.e. nice/great/excellent/whatever else there is idk i haven't played for a while) to give out for consecutive successful veil jumps. also, i think it'd be kinda funny if you missed one in the chain and it showed the mario party "miss"
- it'd be kinda neat if she could shadow veil under knuckles breakable walls (like the one at knuckles' path split in gfz2), although this is probably way more effort than it's worth since most knuckles paths are slower anyway.
for a first srb2 mod this is incredible. most of this review is nitpicks-- the only thing i can't look past is veil rise being as completely cracked as it is right now. but even despite that, i'm still having so much fun with her just because she flows so damn well and her visuals are so charming.
